Jon
Kennedy, Nanty Glo Home Page webmaster and owner, is a former teen and campus
minister. He began his journalism career as teen columnist for the Nanty Glo Journal
and its sister weekly newspapers from 1957 to '62 and became the Journal's
third editor in 1962 at age 20. He has edited other newspapers and magazines,
and more recently, webzines, ever since. His articles have appeared in the Los
Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Christianity
Today, and many other publications. His Jonals appear here on Mondays, Wednesdays,
and Fridays.

Some
personal correlations

Part of my fascination
with our current topic (the influence of the mindset of the American Revolutionary
period and the overlapping Great Awakening in American religion) and the book
it is based on*, is correlations that I see to what I've been learning about the
history of that time to my own family and its own "mindsets." The roots of both
my father's and my mother's families have been traced to just that period, the
farthest-traced Kennedy (Isaac) in our line having been born, most likely in Pennsylvania
but possibly in Ulster, Ireland, during the Revolutionary War. In the sense that
we "know" Truman, Eisenhower...Clinton and Bush, he grew up knowing Washington,
Jefferson, Adams and the other earliest presidents, and he lived even beyond Lincoln.

I've discovered Isaac Kennedy only since the past decade
and have since visited his "homestead" in Juniata County. His family house was
on a narrow (now) macadam road not within hollering distance to the nearest neighbors,
and even today not convenient to any town or marketplace. If I imbued any "Kennedy
mindset" in my formative years it was that "we Kennedys" were fiercely Protestants
willing to fight for our religion but who didn't go to church or want to engage
in what is now called Godtalk. (My brothers and I were in church most Sundays
because our mother took us, but my dad and his father and the rest of his relatives
seemed to fit the preceeding profile.)

On Mother's side,
I'm told her mother was also a devout EUB-Methodist, but none of the men in that
family seemed to be churchgoing either. Both of these "profiles" seem to fit the
strongest general outline of the Great Awakening revival. Most of the converts
were women and the popular philosophy (common-sense realism synthesized with orthodox
Protestantism) was that one could be a good Christian even if you were a congregation
of one, and at that one that never held "formal worship," probably not
even private prayers. Of course if you were part of that generation you didn't
have to read any books or even tracts to jump to the conclusion that this means
"me and God" and perhaps "me and my Bible" are all I need to be fiercely Protestant.
And if "me" doesn't know enough "theoretical information" about God to even discuss
Him or "it" with the next generation, the odds are high that next generation
may still check "Protestant" on the legal forms asking for a religion, but will
be functionally agnostic.

I don't mean to judge anyone here,
but it seemed to me when I was growing up in the woods of Blacklick Township and
the streets and cafes of Nanty Glo that I encountered people fitting this profile
everywhere. Most of our neighbors were Protestant; hardly any of our neighbors
were church goers, ergo (I assumed and have no reason to believe that was a wrong
assumption) most our our neighbors were functionally agnostics.

A
recent eye-opening article appropos the preceding argued that despite the widespread
myth that those early days of our Republic were something of a golden Christian
age, in fact there has been no more churched generation in American history than
the present one, or at least the one that is now over 50 years of age. A significant
difference I see between the church dropouts of my grandparents' and their grandparents'
generations is that at least those generations checked the box on their official
records as "Christian," "Catholic," or "Protestant,"
whereas in our time those who don't join a church are more likely to check "none
of the above," and rather than stand with their Christian relatives and neighbors,
more likely stand against them.

If you remember
The Original Hollywood Squares and its comics, this will bring a tear to your
eyes. These great questions and answers are from the days when "Hollywood Squares"
game show responses were spontaneous! Peter Marshall was the host asking the questions,
of course.

Q.
As you grow older, do you tend to gesture more or less with your hands while talking?

A. Rose Marie:
You ask me one more growing old question Peter, and I'll give you a gesture you'll
never forget.

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